The UN and Libya

[yelloutloud]

How is the UN funded? Whenever there is a crisis and some military intervention is needed some countries seem to be more involved than others. With Libya it appears to be UK, USA, France, Italy, Canada and Denmark. I know many other countries supported the latest intervention but how is it funded? Is there a central pot that countries contribute according to their size/wealth? Or do countries have a say but pay nothing? It always seems to be the same hardcore members.

However they're funded why are they not protesting at their resolution being betrayed by the bombing of civilians by the Brits et al. The Arab League has already stated this is not what they voted for. More western imposed regime change masked as protecting the rebels. This is becoming repetitive.

Who says civilians are being bombed?

In answer to the original question there's quite a good section on UN Funding on good old Wikipedia.

Glasnost, if they are bombing civilians, this was inevitable, surely. Imo they should have stopped at imposing a no-fly zone - but they always knew they might end up killing ordinary people.

Btw, I've read your posts on another thread about this, and agree with what you wrote.

I'm not sure intervention was the best thing we could have done for the Libyans.

Any bombimg of densely populated cities to take out military installations causes civilian casulaties. Reports say 50 or so have already been killed. The Arab League didn't want this. The resolution didn't sanction this and any countries now participating in the killing of civilians are guilty of war crimes.

But we're used to this and we know there's one rule for them and another one for us. Such are the ways of realpolitiks.

Mugabe has killed as many as Gaddafi but then again their is no oil in Zimbabwe. That said I am pleased the "rebels" are being supported.

The UN is funded by member states making contributions although permanent members of the security council do tend to put up a lot of the money.

The US is as you'd expect the largest contributor to the UN and it's one of the reasons the UN HQ is in New York (even though technically its not US soil).

The permanent security council are the ones who must "approve" military action. It's permanent members are UK, US, Russia, China & France. Basically what used to be the biggest world powers.

Quite why we're still there along with France is beyond me. We've no longer an empire. Not even the top 5 economy. We should resign our place along with France in favour of a EU member. It would be like New York and LA each having a member. Perhaps then we'll stop involving ourselves in someone else's fight with no real idea of how to get ourselves out.

Thank you niceguy2. Kind of agree with you too. Old habits die hard don't they! I am going to look at Wikipedia about the funding. Not sure how much will be accurate as I am not too keen on Wikipedia so if anyone has any other info on how much each country contributes to the UN it would be appreciated.

Thanks Huddspur. Do you have any more info?:)

Yelloutloud: it's not that clear - the different bits of the UN run their own budgets, and specific activities may be funded by individual calls for resources. Then there's the difference between what countries should pay, and what they actually do.

It's not even readily searchable on the UN's own website.

Are there any particular parts of the budget you're interested in? It might be easier to find specific bits, rather than the whole.

Wikipedia info is interesting anyone interested should take a look

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations#Funding

Interesting to see that the 5 permanent security memebers contribute by assessment based on their wealth plus a weighted surcharge. So we are paying more than countries with a similar wealth to ours (Germany, Italy for example).
I don't think you could have an EU member instead of individual countries as the UN discusses a lot more that military intervention. lets face it the EU doesn't do a very good job of representing the current member states - unless of course, you are an original member!

meditrina - I noticed that a lot of the contributions are voluntary and therefore never paid. The World Food programme for one has made huge cuts due to a lack of contributions.

I was really just interested to see how contributions were decided and made as there are nearly 200 countries in the UN but always the same few who are in the thick of it. I appreciate that it should be a graded system but wonder what happens when a country fails to make its payment...hmm